Writing–Breaking in a New Novel Method

I’ve spent the past couple of days breaking in a new pair of heels. I haven’t worn heels for quite a while. I’ve gained some weight and messed up my left knee since the last time I did. It’s taking some work to get used to them. If I’m going to be standing in them for several hours, comfort is important.

The same thing could be said for this new novel I’m writing. I’m taking this new approach of outlining a few chapters, writing them, then revising them. After doing it for several weeks (I started back in April), I can definitely say it’s taking some getting used to.

On the plus side, I’m able to go back and fix major story problems immediately. I don’t have to wait until I’m finished with the first draft and into revisions to fix something that’s nagging at me. For example, the first three chapters of this draft were terrible. They were a downright boring info dump. So before I went on, I had the opportunity to fix that and better mete out the information while keeping it all interesting. I don’t have that specter hanging over my head as I move on.

On the other hand, it’s definitely slow progress. If I were doing this in typical NaNoWriMo style, I’d either be done or at the very least, close to done by now. I’d have a shitty first draft as usual, but I would be done. And that shitty first draft would probably need a lot of work. As of right now, I haven’t gotten past the initial first story-fixing revision on any of my novel manuscripts.

So with this new approach, what I can guarantee that the draft I’m left with when I write the last sentence should be in better shape than a draft written the NaNo way. That’s the theory, anyway. It will still need revisions because what I write will always need revisions. But it shouldn’t need as much in the way of revisions. At the very least the story should be solid.

It’s too soon to tell if this will become my main way of writing novels. I doubt it. After all, I don’t plan on wearing my heels every day. But this will be a nice method to pull out in between NaNoWriMos when I’m feeling restless and tired of working on short stories and sick of working on novel revisions and I need to create something original or when I have an idea I just can’t shake.

For the those times when I need something a little different, I think this will work just fine.